Norma Jean, who last month announced the release of their forthcoming new album, ‘Deathrattle Sing For Me’ – due August 12th on Solid State Records, have today shared new single ‘Spearmint Revolt‘.
“There is no editing stage,” says singer Cory Brandan about the track.“Every edit is a new creation, and some songs write themselves. This song was thrown out, retrieved, reworked, and thrown out again a few times. After almost abandoning it completely, it wasn’t the song that needed to change — but our view of what kind of song it truly was.”
He continues, “There is a lot of [guitarist] Grayson [Stewart] on this album, and I’ve never seen him more determined to make a statement than with what he writes than with this track. This song ended up coining a new common phrase in the Norma Jean camp: ‘It had to be off the album before it could be on it.’ Abandoning this song forced us to make it work in a much more desperate way.”
The song also factors into the album as a whole in two massive ways, actually. Brandan finishes, “The title and chorus lyrics are a tribute to the ’90s music we grew up with and how some bands would make some of their heaviest songs and name them something that forces you to view it differently. It seemed fitting for what this song went through, and it ended up naming the album: Deathrattle Sing For Me.”
Stewart weighs in, saying, “I wanted this song to be an example of how much ground Norma Jean can cover within a single song — while still making it sound cohesive.”
Norma Jean invite an intense level of intimacy on Deathrattle Sing For Me, their ninth full-length album.
The group — rounded out by Grayson Stewart [lead guitar], Clay Crenshaw [guitar/bass], Matt Marquez [drums], and Michael Palmquist [guitar/bass] — plunges into unparalleled emotional depths, as if their very existence depended upon the catharsis these 13 tracks promised. “This record was really about banding together,” observes Brandan. “It embodies the camaraderie of our brotherhood in Norma Jean. At the time, we needed something to do, and we wrote these songs for our own souls. The record was necessary to keep me alive in a very literal sense. It’s a deeper place.”
The band unearthed a searing signature style on O’ God, the Aftermath in 2005. They struck up a creative partnership with iconic producer Ross Robinson on the seminal Redeemer [2007] and The Anti Mother [2008]. The latter notably boasted appearances by Chino Moreno of Deftones and Page Hamilton of Helmet.
Following the acclaimed Meridional [2010], Wrongdoers [2013] represented a critical high watermark with a 9-out-of-10 score from Rock Sound and 9-out-of-10 score from Outburn. On the heels of Polar Similar [2016], they reached another level on All Hail [2019]. In a perfect 5-star review, New Noise Magazine raved, “All Hail is yet another momentous accomplishment on their part,” while Kerrang! attested, “All Hail’s ambition and execution is worthy of worship.” Along the way, they toured with everyone from Rob Zombie and Korn to Mastodon, Lamb of God, and more. During 2021, they recorded what would become Deathrattle Sing For Me with longtime collaborator Jeremy SH Griffith. They nodded to inspirations as diverse as Alice In Chains’ Dirt, The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, and the sample-and-riff onslaught of White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1.
DEATHRATTLE SING FOR ME TRACK LISTING:
1) 1994
2) Call For The Blood
3) Spearmint Revolt
4) Memorial Hoard
5) Aria Obscura
6) Any%
7) Parallella
8) W W A V V E
9) A Killing Word
10) Penny Margs
11) el-roi
12) Sleep Explosion
13) Heartache
Pre-Order/Pre-Saves: https://normajean.ffm.to/deathrattle
